In this week’s Anime Corner Store newsletter, Robert divulged a small update on the Geneon situation, namely, that they have been “in serious talks with a major US home entertainment distributor” (Paramount?) to get some of their series back on store shelves. He can’t reveal any specifics at the risk of ruining his firm’s relationship but he did say the company is new to the anime space, that they will likely pick and choose which titles are included in the deal.
I would expect an announcement to occur in the next couple months if a deal indeed gets made. You can read the unedited section from this week’s newsletter yourself after the jump and begin to speculate on your own. Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this week, ANN reported that listings for recent ADV Films titles including Kanon, Gurren Lagann, and Sgt. Frog have been removed from the company’s website and store. Soon after, a spokesman for the company told them that they are “working through a few short-term challenges and fully intends to continue our releases”. However, further information has come out in the form of a canceled ICv2 article that was posted on a couple forums and subsequently Robert’s Anime Corner Blog and, at least for me, puts a new light to the breaking down of negotiations with Geneon late last year. It’s not as horrible as Geneon - the reason why it’s a canceled article is that something got worked out - but it’s still something I’m concerned about as this industry continues to traverse a rough patch. Read the rest of this entry »
ICv2 posted an interview with Funimation founder Gen Fukunaga where he was asked about many issues including the state of the US anime market, timing of releases and the impact and future of legal and illegal downloading. What follows are highlights from the question-and-answer session:
Mr. Fukunaga began by stated the obvious, that “illegal downloads are definitely an issue” and that “the main mode of monetization of the customer [DVD sales] is definitely suffering”. He also thinks that Japanese companies has “suddenly woken up” after seeing “the huge difficulties some of [Funimation's] competitors are having” (read: Geneon) and that they are “talking a lot about this issue”.
This morning ANN published an editorial by Justin Sevakis, the founder of ANN who now works for Imaginasian TV, in which he described the sorry state the industry is currently in financially, how it got to that state of affairs, and the problems preventing any significant change from happening. Apparently, the numbers are “terrifying” and the business model is clearly failing. His doom-and-gloom piece, I think, made many good points about how difficult the situation is now for licenses to break even due to years non-interference with fansub distribution. Read the rest of this entry »
In the first part of a ICv2 interview that was posted today, Bandai Visual USA president Tatsunori Konno said that there are not “more than 200,000 core fans” and estimated its size in dollars to be $350 million. Konno also clarified the difference between Bandai Visual and Bandai Entertainment and the company’s relationship with Sunrise. There was mention of the Wings of Honneamise being released in DVD/Blu-ray and DVD/HD-DVD packs at an MSRP of $79.99, which is double Freedom’s $39.99 MSRP. That is likely because Honneamise has a “quite long” running time (120 minutes vs. Freedom’s 25 minutes) and thus requires two separate discs (1 regular DVD & 1 hi-def DVD) instead of a single twin-format disc with HD and standard-def on the same side.
Konno said in part two that the company wants to let fans to know they are producing high quality products and that if people notice and buy it, prices could reduce gradually. Even with that justification, RightStuf, AnimeNation, RACS, and Amazon each have their pre-order prices at or below $59.99. Wings of Honneamise comes out in high-definition for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray on September 11th, a little something nice to distract us Americans from the “anniversary” coverage the news media is bound to do on that particular Tuesday.
Remember John Ledford’s mention of “B” titles a month ago? I had kind of forgotten about it until I came upon two things recently that mentioned it. This week’s edition of the AnimeNation News Podcast released on Thursday covered the topic and an ICv2 interview with Mike Balliff, ADV Senior VP of Sales, mentioned the phrase in a question about whether popularity in Japan is a good indicator of success in America.
Every week on the AnimeNation News Podcast, the hosts cover the news of the past week as well as two or three Ask John questions. The question from June 22nd, “Why Don’t ‘B’ Titles Sell in America Anymore?”, was the first of two to be discussed and below is the audio from the June 28th episode:
Yesterday, ANN posted a two-page interview with John Ledford in which topics spanning the revival of their manga department, licensing, and the anime market in general. One thing I took note of when reading it was Ledford’s reference to A, B, and C ranked titles. First, he used the term referring to buying habits:
If there are 20 titles or a hundred, you’re only going to have 10 percent or 15 percent be considered marketable. A lot of stuff might be very oriented to the Japanese domestic market; other things might simply be just B or C grade titles in today’s market. They may have sold 5 years ago, but thanks to the download business, most people buy their A titles and they download their Bs and Cs. There is no market for B and C titles anymore.
A question later, he used it in discussing retail shelf space:
Five years ago, three years ago you could buy anything and almost anything would sell, not everything but almost. Now you have to be a sniper. You have to snipe the good titles, that’s all that will sell. Everything else, the stores don’t want it, the fans will download it.
…
There’s simply not enough shelf space and the product doesn’t turn fast enough. So I think that’s what you’re going to see. A much lower quantity of titles but you’ll see a better quality. Perhaps some silly company will put some Bs or Cs out there, but that’ll come back to them.
So, don’t be surprised if certain anime with little or no profit potential in America stays unlicensed for many years even though you REALLY want it to appear on Region 1 DVD.
When I win the lottery, I’ll put some of the money toward starting my own anime licensing business and form the “silly company” that Ledford referred to that produces B or C titles. Hopefully, the quality will be better than what Illumitoon first put out and maybe it’ll start out subbed-only with lower MSRPs to get people to buy the titles with less buzz. Oh well, it’s just a idea at the moment - I don’t even know what I’d call this fake business!
Almost everyone in the fan community dislikes 4Kids Entertainment for how they have handled titles like One Piece and some of them wish they would go out of business. Well, the company reported on Friday a $2.3 million net loss for the quarter ending December 31, 2006 and a $1.0 million loss for the year ending 12/31/06 (net gain for 2005 was $5.1 million), but they still have over $18 million in cash and $111 million in total cash and investments so they’re not going out of business in the immediate future. However, there is room for concern as their net revenue as steadily decreased over the past two years from $99.1 million in 2004 to $71.8 million in 2006.
UPDATE (3/2/07 6:30PM PST): I posted some corrections regarding the streaming issue and gave some impressions after watching it.
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I was watching the Oscars last night and thought of the American Anime Awards that were awarded the night before on Saturday at New York Comic-Con. While I am glad that the presentation is more tasteful than other genre-based award shows like the Spike Video Game Awards, I have four suggestions on how to improve the AAA’s (the Anidubs?) for next year.
Suggestion 1: Limit the Eligibility Period
The seemingly only criteria for eligibility is that an anime or manga must be available in the US during the previous year (e.g. 2006). This means that an anime could be nominated in multiple years if it gets a thinpack release in a different calendar year than its debut on the US market. This multi-year nomination problem also affects manga because something like Fruits Basket (the winner for best manga) with more than 10 volumes will likely have its volumes released over a number of years. In an interview with ANN, Milton Griepp from ICv2 was asked about this. Below are both the question and Griepp’s response: Read the rest of this entry »
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